


Gut Feeling

by Anonymous



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Aftermath, Blood Kink, Brock Rumlow is a dick, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Gore, HYDRA Trash Party, I'm Sorry, M/M, Medical Kink, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Pre-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Psychological Torture, Sexual Violence, Stockholm Syndrome, there's a lot to unpack here ok, woundfucking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-10
Updated: 2018-09-17
Packaged: 2019-07-10 15:21:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15952076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: How Bucky got that one scar.





	1. Chapter 1

 

Most of the people that HYDRA brings into this room do not come quietly. Eva has seen a lot of them already, even though she’s only been working here for a few weeks: captured defectors, potential turncoats, staffers who have been questioning the organization’s goals too much and need reminding of its goodness. None of them are innocent, of course: no one who goes against HYDRA can truly be innocent. But they all still complain a _lot_ , even if their punishments are well deserved.

The room she works in is well suited for dealing with these enemies of the rule of order: there are strong restraints attached to the wall, and a stainless-steel surgery table in the middle of the room with even stronger restraints, and everything is well-vented and easy to clean. There is a hose and a drain in the center of the concrete floor, and the doors lock from the outside. The space is very well lit, as well, even when they don’t turn on the surgical light mounted on the ceiling. She supposes that just seeing this room might make a person want to struggle, if they entered the room knowing they were on the wrong side of HYDRA.

Which is why it’s strange to see the way the asset behaves when its handler from the STRIKE team brings it in.

It walks in a half-step behind him, still in its gear but not wearing its mask. She has seen it before, but not this close, and not without a lot of other people around. Right now, it’s late in the day and it’s just Eva and her boss in the room, and the asset wakes up a low desire for self-preservation that she has only ever felt before when standing across a fragile-seeming barrier from a large predator at the zoo. It's bigger than the STRIKE man, whose name Eva is still too new to have learned, but when they reach the surgical table in the middle of the room the man turns and says a few words to it and… it simply starts undoing its harness, obedient.

She watches, unmoving, from her spot next to the bench near the wall, where she and the senior tech had been working on an inventory list. No one in this room has ever cooperated like that before.

Then again, the asset not an enemy of HYDRA—quite the opposite—and the man it’s with doesn’t seem mad at it. So she doesn’t understand why it’s here at all in the first place. She certainly never signed up to be around it. There are braver people for that, or at least bigger ones.

But it’s not her job to ask questions, or even to take part in interrogations. She’s mostly just here to handle technical support and clean up afterwards. Hose the equipment down, operate the paddles if someone’s heart stops, that kind of thing. File paperwork, write up reports, deliver the recordings to whoever is authorized to see them. Boring stuff. Right now, she is glad for that. She’ll stay the hell away, thanks.

But then the senior tech, a middle-aged blonde woman who has never told Eva her real name, looks up from her stack of paperwork. “Go help,” she says. “I have too much to do.”

 _Shit_ , Eva thinks.

She takes a breath, tries to adopt a non-terrified posture, and steps towards the middle of the room.

The asset has stripped itself from the waist up now, and after another quiet couple of words from the STRIKE handler it pulls itself up onto the narrow stainless-steel surgical table, moving casually and strangely gracefully for something of its size. It lies down on its back and lays its arms out on the padded armrests attached to either side. Usually it takes like six men to get someone down on that table, unless the person has been drugged. But the asset moves without complaint. The STRIKE guy steps in, closer to its left side where the metal limb is, and starts to do up the metal wrist restraints on the armrest. Because it seems like the thing to do, Eva steps closer as well, toward the asset's other, slightly weaker side.

The handler nods at her in approval, so she gets even closer, and then close enough to touch, although by the time she's there she feels too light on her feet, like she might faint. The asset up this close is dirty: its hair messed up, something dark smudged on one side of its face. It smells like smoke and of something metallic, enough to overpower the stale, cleaning-solution smell of the room itself. The skin at its bare wrist is warm when her hand brushes against it while reaching for the restraints. It’s looking up at the ceiling, at the surgical lights that hang down over the table and the little camera attached to those lights, which currently isn’t on. It looks slightly annoyed, but with an edge of suppressed curiosity on its face, like it wants to ask a question but knows it can’t.

She gets that, right now.

By the time she’s managed to stop the tremble in her hands enough to close the wrist restraint on its bare right arm, the man is already done restraining both its legs. He doesn't ask her to do anything else, or even look at her. It looks like he’s going to mostly ignore her, like most of the HYDRA higher ups do when they're in here, and in this case Eva is perfectly happy with that.

There’s a loud clanking noise from over near the bench, and she jumps, but it's just the senior tech, opening a drawer. “You need a scalpel?” she calls out.

“Nah,” the STRIKE guy says. “I brought my own stuff.” He taps something clipped onto his belt that appears to be a knife—which makes things even more confusing, honestly—and then looks at Eva. “Would you move the table down a little while you’re over there?”

That is indeed something she can do. It’s a simple hydraulic system controlled by a foot pump, and even though doing so forces her to get in closer to the asset’s side, she depresses the pump enough to move the metal table down a few inches, until the man nods at her to stop. The asset remains still while it happens, and doesn’t look at her. Once she is done she steps back, out of range, and casts a hopeful glance back toward the bench, but the senior tech raises her head from her paperwork long enough to glare. Clearly she’s not going to get away with slipping away from the action.

Well, if she has to stay close, standing at the head of the table is usually the safest option. She doesn’t feel safe _now_ , but at least the other person who’s near the asset is within slightly easier reach of it.

The man in question has now moved so he’s standing in the little space between the asset’s side and where its human arm is clamped to the armrest. He smiles down at it, and the asset, its head resting against the table’s bright metal surface, turns its eyes to look at him. Its mouth moves to form a word. 

“Shut up,” the man says, even though he is still smiling. “We’re going to do something special today, and it’s going to be fun. But you’re going to be quiet, because I’ve had enough of your talking.”

The asset looks back at him and nods thoughtfully, like the man has actually made a salient point. The man smiles wider, approving. “Last chance,” he says then, glancing over at the senior tech. “You sure you don’t want a go first?”

“Definitely,” she says from over at the bench, sounding bored.

“You?” he says, looking up at Eva.

She swallows. Her mouth has gone dry without her even realizing. “A—go?”

“Do you want to fuck him,” he says, speaking a bit too slowly, like he’s explaining something to a child.

She stutters out the word before giving it any thought. “No!”

He shrugs, and Eva frowns at him. The question was a little inappropriate, even though he’d phrased it so casually it was like he was offering her a beer or a slice of pizza, and also—why would you bring the asset _here_ just to do that, and also this is the first time she’s heard the asset referred to as _him_ , and if someone’s going to have sex with it how is that going to work with it tied up like this and—what the hell was with the knife?

“Too bad,” he says, looking down at the asset. “Warm up might have done you good.” He reaches out to pat its bare human shoulder, then looks over at the senior tech again. He jabs his other hand at the ceiling. “Is it running?”

She sighs and reaches over to hit a button on the little remote they keep taped up on the wall next to the sink. “There. It is now.”

Eva looks up in time to see the camera’s little red “recording” light come on. The STRIKE man glances up at the camera as well, then back down at the asset.

“Smile,” he says down to it, and the asset blinks up at him, like it’s trying to understand whether the order is literal. It must figure out that it isn’t, because it just stares up into the camera lens, looking sullen. She notices for the first time that it’s breathing a little heavier now. Just a little.

The man lets out a little happy exhale, like a person who’s just woken up from a great nap and knows he is going to enjoy the rest of his day. His hand goes back to his belt, and yep, it’s definitely a knife there. Eva crosses her arms nervously as he pulls it out of the leather sheath: it’s a decent size, with a serrated edge on one side, shiny in the bright light.

She swallows again. Her mouth still feels dry. But it’s not her place, professionally, to ask what is happening. She’s not scared of the knife, or of the potential for violence in and of itself—there are far scarier weapons in this room, and she has seen a _lot_. No, she is scared of what the _asset_ might do with that fuck-off metal arm once this man gets started with the knife. It’s been fine so far, yes, but it’s not in pain yet.

Being confused as hell about just  _what_ this man is planning doesn’t help, either.

But at first, what happens is anticlimactic: the man presses the knife against the asset’s skin, but then just runs the tip of the blade down its side, over its ribs and then its stomach. Too gentle to break skin or even leave a mark, and very slowly.

It’s quiet in the room. The sound of a faucet dripping in the sink near where the senior tech is sitting, and of Eva's own breathing. The asset shifts very slightly in its restraints, more like it’s bored than anything else, and stares past the blinking camera to the white ceiling above them. Only the tension in its jaw gives away that it’s not entirely comfortable with being strapped down in this very bright room and caressed with a knife.

The man moves the blade, eventually, down to a spot on the asset’s side, a few inches below its ribcage. He just holds it there for a while, the seconds ticking on, the asset’s chest rising and falling steadily. The skin on its torso looks very pale in this light, almost bluish. The man is smiling to himself.

Then there’s a tiny surprised noise from the back of the asset’s throat as the knife moves. Not a downwards slashing movement like she’d expected, but a short forward thrust, penetrating skin and muscle. The blade stops maybe an inch inside: blood wells up around it and spills down over the asset’s skin, dripping past the tiny raised lip on the edge of the metal table and onto the floor.

Eva looks away out of habit, because she is still new, and it’s not her job to do the interrogations themselves, and sometimes the first sight of blood can still be a lot to handle. She looks at the wall, then the ceiling, then finally back to the asset’s face. Its eyes are wide; it’s breathing hard through clenched teeth. Given all of her background knowledge of HYDRA’s most powerful weapon, it is a little disappointing at first to see it overreact so much to a relatively minor stab wound—but then she looks back, and sees what the STRIKE guy is actually doing. 

He’s sliding the first couple of inches of the blade in and out of the wound, and although the serrated edge is catching on the asset’s skin, he doesn’t actually seem to be aiming at widening the cut: he is just staring down dreamily at the back-and-forth motion of the knife, a smile on his face. As Eva watches, his free hand goes to shift down over the front of his black pants.

 _Ohhh_ , she thinks, some of her confusion finally clearing up, and in front of her the asset actually raises its head off the metal table to look, like it’s trying to figure out what is going on as well. It lowers it quickly, then looks up at Eva like it’s hoping she might explain. It’s still grimacing with pain, but it has hardly made a sound, and it’s so different from what she usually sees in here that it’s... kind of touching. She’s still too scared to do anything other than pretend it’s not there, though.

A few more seconds and the man pulls the knife out, reaches over to set it down on the little stainless-steel trolley nearby that they usually keep their instruments on. The knife lies there, reflecting the light and smeared with red blood. The man turns back to the table, and then the asset twitches as he brushes the edge of the cut with his index and middle fingers. 

More blood, and a wet, gloopy sound as the man pushes the two fingers in, probing them deeper than the knife had gone. The smell of blood is quite strong now, more of it spilling out, running down the back of the man’s ungloved hand and dripping down off his palm. She can see sweat starting to form on the asset’s skin, visible on its forehead and in the hollow of its throat.

The man must find something inside the wound that’s blocking his way, because he makes an annoyed face and jabs the fingers around. The asset tenses: she sees its human arm turn in its restraints, the hand forming a loose fist. The STRIKE guy turns his own hand at the wrist, and then he suddenly twists his unseen fingers inside it and shoves, like he’s forcing something inside the wound open with his fingernails.

That is the first time the asset screams.


	2. Chapter 2

The noise echoes loud in the room, followed by a clanking sound as the asset’s metal arm clashes against the restraints. Eva takes a step back.

“Don’t be scared,” the STRIKE man says. He is still looking down at the asset, eyes fixed carefully on its face with that same dreamy edge to his expression; it’s only when his eyes flicker up that she realizes he is talking to _her_. “He’s just being dramatic. He won’t break the restraints, because he’s good. Aren’t you?”

The asset is breathing deeply, eyes wide. It doesn’t answer, but its breathing does slow, and its arms relax incrementally back against the padded armrests. It still looks angry, yes, but then again it always looks angry.

The man reaches up and pats its cheek with the hand that’s not still half inside its abdomen.

“That’s good,” he says. “That’s better.”

The asset keeps making an effort to control its breathing, even as the fingers inside of it twist and pull out, bringing out another little stream of blood.

Eva has, of course, guessed what the man is going to do next by the time he starts undoing his black pants—that’s why he’d lowered the table some, that’s why he’d cut the asset right on its side like that. It’d have occurred to her sooner if she’d had it in her brain that such a thing could even be done.

But even now that she _has_ guessed, it’s still—definitely something new, even after all these weeks of seeing so many new things. She has seen plenty of nudity, and a surprising amount of sex—it’s such a good, easy weapon against HYDRA’s enemies—but not this. Nothing like this.

She doesn’t move, stands awkwardly at the head of the table, gripping its metal edge on either side of the asset’s head. It helps that the STRIKE guy acts like pulling his dick out with a hand that’s still wet with blood from a stab wound is just a _completely normal thing to do_ in front of two other people and a cyborg strapped to a table.

The asset's looking at the man, too; it raises its head slightly from the table to see down over its right shoulder. The man is stroking himself, using the blood to ease the movement. Eva hears the asset’s breath catch, and the man laughs, showing teeth.

“Oh, baby, you’re adorable,” he says, voice soft. He’s got the height of the table right to line himself up just like this, and the asset makes a noise when the head of his dick touches the split-open place on its side. It tenses up, cringes downwards like it can will itself to sink into the hard metal underneath it. But it doesn’t protest, and doesn’t try to move away.

The man re-angles his dick and tries to push inside but it doesn’t work right away: the cut he has made is too narrow at the bottom end. There’s a wet noise and a high whining sound from the asset as he twice tries and fails to jab himself in, cock catching on the slit-open muscle, and then the man clucks his tongue and pulls back, visibly annoyed. He lets go of his dick, sticks his index finger back into the gash instead. Hooks the first knuckle into the edge of the cut closest to the table and pulls. The asset’s body jerks so hard the whole table shudders, and it screams through its teeth.

Eva feels her shoulders tense and her hands clench into fists, because the look on its face is terrifying: it’s the look of someone who wants to kill everyone in the room, quite possibly wants to kill everyone in the _world_ —

—but it doesn’t break its bonds.

The man’s finger slides out. More blood weeps out of the wound, dripping past the edge of the table and into the dark puddle that’s already forming on the floor right in front of the STRIKE man’s black boots. The asset’s breathing is loud, its chest rising and falling fast.

The man takes a second to look down at all the new blood, the dreamy expression back on his face, and kicks the toe of his boot against the edge of the puddle. He grabs his dick again, giving it a few loving strokes as he looks down at the mess. Then he looks up, and takes a tiny step forward, and—

“ _Wait_ ,” the asset says.

Eva hears herself draw breath in the sudden silence in the room. Even the senior tech, over by the wall, looks up from what she is doing.

She has never heard the asset talk.

The STRIKE guy, however, just glances up at it nonchalantly. He looks only a little annoyed, like he’s being questioned by a disobedient toddler. “What is it?” he says.

The asset looks up at him. It’s still breathing too fast.

“What is it?” he says again. He’s still holding his dick, and it’s still shiny with blood, but he speaks like the background of their conversation is perfectly normal. “Do you have something to say, soldier?”

The asset winces as it raises its head off the table to look at him. There’s something like bewilderment on its face, like it still can’t accept exactly what’s about to be done to it despite the very copious evidence right next to it. Its mouth moves like it’s going to talk again, then it frowns and stops, licks its lips. Finally, it drops its head back against the metal table, shakes its head. Strands of hair fall over its face with the motion, sticking there with the sweat.

“Good,” the man says, and smiles. He takes another tiny step forward, avoiding the worst of the blood on the floor, and begins again to guide himself in.

This time, it works, one long steady push. The asset howls, and she resists the urge to cover her ears.

The noise breaks off into a weak moan as the man bottoms out inside the wound. Underneath where she is standing, the asset’s face is a deep pink from the strain; its face and torso are wet with sweat, skin glowing with it in the pale light. But it keeps still, and doesn’t break the restraints, and seeing that, seeing it manage to do that, Eva feels a surge of—something. She doesn’t feel _sympathy_ for it, of course (this is the will of HYDRA, and even if it is not an enemy, this is what HYDRA has decided is going to be done to it, and that is settled) but its impressive reactions _do_  almost make her want to cheer it on.

She can’t do that, of course. But she does dare to reach out and touch its head with her gloved hands, fingers in its sweaty hair. She can feel the smooth texture of its hair through the thin latex, feel the warmth of its scalp. Its eyes are closed. It still smells faintly like smoke under the new red-meat smell of all the blood from its stomach.

The man doesn’t seem to notice what she is doing: he’s just holding still inside it, eyes closed and his face glowing with what looks like long-awaited happiness. After a few seconds he pulls back, dick slipping almost all the way out of the wound. The noise the asset makes under her hands is more scared than pained, maybe because it realizes what's coming.

And it’s right about that. The man starts to fuck it steadily, one hand clutching at the asset’s clothed hip, the other on the bicep of its extended right arm. She shouldn’t watch, would not watch if it were normal sex, but she can’t help being drawn to the sheer strange hideousness of it: every thrust forces more blood out of the wound, and it drips and drips down onto the man’s boots, spattering the concrete floor around where he stands. The asset’s body shudders with the movement; it’s trembling under Eva's grip, radiating panicked heat under her fingers. The noise of the man moving in and out of it is wet and steady and loud, like the sound of thick liquid being mixed in a bowl.

She keeps her fingers in its hair. The STRIKE man’s face looks _ecstatic_ , gaze moving from the cut-open skin to the asset’s flushed, tortured face. Once, he looks up at the camera above them and smiles, before focusing back on the sweat and the blood and the tensed trembling muscles.

“God,” he says, voice low and breathy. “God, I’m the first one to fuck you like this, aren’t I.” His pace increases, and he really seems the type to get off on his own voice, so Eva thinks it might already be over soon, but then—

It happens quickly. The asset’s head jerks hard under her hands, its eyes opening sudden and wide like a panicked animal’s. For a fraction of a second its gaze meets hers, enough for her to take in the terror in its expression, and then it jerks its head to one side. Vomit splatters across the stainless steel.

Eva lets go of its hair and steps back out of instinct. The sight is disgusting enough, even without the sharp smell of vomit filling the room. The asset retches again, liquid splashing on its metal shoulder. It rolls its head to face upward again, gasping, gazing wide-eyed at the ceiling with a kind of resigned terror on its face.

“What the _fuck_ ,” the STRIKE man says from its side, loud.

Eva looks up at him. He’s pulled his dick out of the asset's lacerated side, and one bloodied hand is already raised above its face, and she can tell he’d been planning on hitting it. But enough of the vomit is smeared all over the asset’s skin that he thinks better of it. He leans over it and grabs its hair instead, turns its head roughly to face him. The asset whines.

“What the fuck, soldier,” he says again. “You do that deliberately? You trying to ruin our good time?”

The asset opens its mouth like it’s trying to say something, closes it again. Its lower lip is trembling, wet with spit. Vomit is running from its nose. It’s no surprise that the man’s erection is wilting.

“It probably couldn’t help it,” the senior tech calls out, and Eva and the man both look over to the bench where she’s still sitting.

“You’re jostling its guts around in there,” she goes on. “It’s gonna get nauseous.”

The man looks at her, considering this new information, and then back at the asset. “Is that true?” he says, and he shakes his hand back and forth in the asset’s hair, yanking at it. “My dick just too big for you, you disgusting pig?”

The asset keeps staring up at him. It doesn’t seem able to talk. The man’s other hand has curled into a fist, and she waits for the sound of the blow.

But then he lets go of its hair.

“Yeah, it’s okay,” he says. “Not your fault, huh?”

He lowers the hand that'd been raised, and with his other hand he actually strokes over the patch of hair he’s just let go of, smoothing it down, and the asset exhales, shaky.

He looks up at Eva, tilts his head at the mess by its head, and says: “Help clean this up.”

This part, she’s good at. She steps over to where the hose is attached to the wall, turns on the faucet. She keeps the spray aimed down at the floor as she steps back over to the table. The man moves his hand, and Eva aims the stream of cold water at the asset, who turns its face to one side when it sees it coming.

She fully expects this to turn into punishment, despite the man’s forgiving words: maybe he will grab the hose off her and force it over the asset’s mouth until it half-drowns, maybe he will do something else more creative. Hoses and water seem to bring that out in people, in this room.

But he just waits and watches as she rinses off its face, its arm, the metal surface underneath its head. Water runs down and drips off the edges of the bright steel table, and Eva is not doing a very good job of this: she’d need to have the asset unrestrained, or the table at a different angle, to truly get rid of all the mess. But the STRIKE guy doesn’t seem to mind. He's standing there watching with his pants still open, one hand resting flat against the asset’s stomach near its hipbone, the touch almost protective.

She shuts off the water back at the wall after she’s done. From here, she can see that there’s enough blood on the floor now for a little trickle of it to be flowing toward the drain, mixing with the water from the table.

“It’s okay, baby,” she hears the man say, and the gentleness of his voice makes it jarring when she shifts her gaze and sees his hand working steady on his dick to get himself hard again. The hand he’d had on its stomach has left a streak of blood.

She takes her place back near the asset’s head, and after considering it for a second or two, touches its hair again. It barely notices the touch. Its eyes are on the man above it, looking at him steadily through its wet eyelashes. When he pushes himself back inside of it, it doesn’t scream.

“Good,” he says, comforting, and he draws his hips back, drives them forward again. Again. Again. “Good.”

The asset’s eyes grow wet, too, shiny under the bright light; she can see the strain growing its jaw, in the muscles of its human shoulder and its abdomen. It gets less and less quiet, too, although it’s obviously trying its best not to make a noise. The man’s thrusts are shaking the whole table. There's so much blood on the floor now that his boots make a tiny wet splishing sound when he shifts his stance. The asset bites its lip, and shudders, and finally it sucks in breath and says “ _Please._ ”

This time, the man doesn’t seem annoyed when it speaks, but he doesn't stop either. He smiles at it, leans over it to grab its chin. It keeps talking, quiet. “Please. I don’t know what I did.”

“You didn’t do anything, baby,” he says. “You were great today. I just wanted to do something special. You got that? Something special.”

It swallows. Moves its mouth like it’s going to reply, chin still held between the man’s index finger and thumb. “Special,” it says finally, uncertain.

“That’s right,” he says and the asset nods again. For the first time that she’s seen it, that look of perpetual anger has faded off its face. It looks at him with a strange confused blankness that seems to overlay something like trust.

Something about that look must set the man off, because he lets go of its chin and straightens up and then grips down on its hip again, starts fucking it harder.

The asset looks up at the ceiling, up past the camera. It is weeping. It looks, more than anybody else she has seen in this room all week, like it wants to die, wants never to have been born into a universe that contains a room like this one. And yet it holds still.

The rhythm of someone being fucked in this room is familiar, and _this_ rhythm is not different, even if the other circumstances are. The man drives himself in harder and deeper and moans, loud over the weak pained sounds the asset is making, and then slows, finally, and then there is only the noise of the asset’s quick shallow breaths. The restraints are undamaged. As promised, it hasn’t broken its bonds.

That’s good, of course, just for personal safety reasons. But on top of that she is, oddly, proud of it.

The STRIKE guy exhales happily, leans down again over the asset’s face, with something she might mistake for genuine fondness if the lower half of the man’s body wasn’t covered with blood from its insides.

“Shh,” he says. He’s close enough to kiss it; a little droplet of sweat falls from his hair onto the asset’s cheek. “Shh, it’s okay, Look at me now.”

It does, blinking.

“Wasn’t so bad, was it.”

It shakes its head, and the man grins. The asset lifts its head up off the table and the man leans in closer and it _nuzzles into him_ and he lets it, tears and snot and remains of the vomit and all, and if that isn’t the most touching thing she has ever seen. Hail fucking HYDRA.

The senior tech interrupts their moment. “Can I step in?”

The man nods, that fond look still glowing on his face, and takes a step back. She pushes forward as he absentmindedly does up his pants. The gesture strikes Eva as ridiculous: he is going to be blood-covered mess under them anyway, and the pants themselves are half-soaked in blood as well. Maybe that’s part of the charm for him.

The senior tech has a penlight in one hand and a new set of latex gloves on, and she gets closer, stepping around the worst of the blood, to shine the light on the asset’s side. The wound itself looks terrible, chafed and red and inflamed, but it seems to have mostly stopped bleeding. Curious, Eva steps away from the asset’s head to get a better look. It twitches a little when her hands leave its hair, but the hard part for it is over now, so she doesn’t feel too bad. She pulls her wet gloves off too, sets them aside on the instrument trolley beside the STRIKE man’s bloodied knife.

The senior tech is probing at the wound with gloved fingers. She’s not a gentle person by nature, and the asset’s hands clench into fists under the restraints. Its insides are illuminated by the beam from the penlight when she uses her hand to stretch the wound open: wet edges of carved-open muscles, a pink-beige mess of something that might be organs beyond that. A little strip of paler tissue running along one end, like a piece of silverskin on a steak.

“Hmm,” the senior tech is saying, “I’d have to open it up to know for sure, but I don’t think you hit anything important. It’s had worse.” She shrugs and straightens up, clicks off the penlight. “I’ll disinfect it. I should at least irrigate the—”

“Nah, don’t do that.” The man has stepped closer to the asset’s head now, where Eva had just been standing, and he looks down at it and grins, tousles its wet hair. “More romantic if you keep everything in there.”

She rolls her eyes and starts to pull her gloves off, shrugging again. “Whatever. It’ll live. Heal up fast, asset,” she says, then glances at the clock above the door. “Fuck, I need a coffee.”

She disposes of the gloves in the bin by the door, wipes her shoes off with some of the paper towels they keep there, and hits the code on the keypad to exit. The door closes behind her with a clank.

The man’s fingers are in the asset’s hair, stroking. It looks up at him steadily, even though it is shaking now and even in the middle of all of that blood, and once again she feels a surge of something close to affectionate pride.

The man’s eyes are on Eva now. A little bit of blood has somehow found its way to his cheek, smeared across one cheekbone. It suits him.

“So what do you think?” he says. “You want to fuck him now?”

Actually, she kind of does.


	3. Chapter 3

Steve is always touching the scar.

When they are in bed together like this, or when Bucky is leaning against him outside and it’s too warm for a shirt; any time that Bucky is topless and Steve is nearby. Give him long enough, and Steve will end up running his fingers over the thick pale line of skin on Bucky's side, stroking away from it and along Bucky’s belly, then back again. Bucky figures Steve barely realizes that he's doing it, because it usually happens after Steve has been touching him for a while, once he’s all zoned-out and happy and his face is shining like he still doesn’t believe that Bucky is real.

His face is shining like that now. It’s early evening, the light golden and the air warm as it flows in through the open door of the hut Bucky's staying in. Steve is leaning over him on Bucky’s small bed, and even though Steve is naked and very obviously and visibly ready to do a lot more, all he wants to do is kiss Bucky like he can’t believe he is here. Bucky feels relaxed, spoiled, fawned over like a king. Steve's kissing him near his hairline, and his fingers are stroking his bare chest, then back to that scar.

He has never asked Bucky about it. Steve had stopped asking about things like that a long time ago, and that was mostly a good thing, because the answers Bucky had given him about those things (like his arm, or his teeth, or his ribs, or the fainter scars on his back and legs) made Steve upset, and it’s fucking _terrible_ when Steve gets upset.

Steve would never hurt him, would never _think_ of hurting him, Bucky knows that like he knows his own breath—but it’s like his _body_ doesn’t know, and so when Steve gets like that Bucky usually sits without moving at all and keeps his face neutral until Steve is done pacing around and ranting and giving angry speeches about HYDRA and everything else related to them that he can think of, and then usually Bucky excuses himself and goes outside and closes his eyes and makes a fist with his hand until he doesn’t want to punch something or rip his own hair out or yell anymore, until he is okay pretending again.

This particular scar, though—he wouldn’t mind Steve asking about that. Steve wouldn’t be upset, because Bucky would tell him that this one wasn’t so bad.

(He wouldn’t mention the name of the handler who did it, of course. Steve is upset whenever Bucky mentions that name, even if he pretends not to be. Bucky can see the way Steve’s mouth gets all tight and he sits up too straight.)

Bucky wouldn’t mention the name, no, but he’d tell Steve, truthfully, that this particular scar had been a good thing. That the act itself was awful, of course, an agony-blurred nightmare, but that more often than not his handler hadn't wanted to bother with the mess or going to medical, and so had just made a shallow cut over the healed-up scar tissue and then jerked them both off while talking about it instead. And more often than that his handler wouldn’t even go _that_ far; all he had to do when they were alone was run his fingers along that line of paler skin, and Bucky would melt and get all shivery, even though he never quite remembered why. He’d tell Steve, as well, that sometimes when they _weren’t_ alone his handler could just brush that spot with his hand, right through Bucky’s clothes, and how _good_ that had been. It didn’t look like an intimate touch to others, even though it was; it was a secret the two of them had together, and that hidden private connection was nice, so nice, such a good thing to have back when all of him had belonged to everybody.

So when Steve’s fingers run again over the little irregular patch of skin, when he kisses Bucky softly on the mouth and follows up the touch of those fingers with a light stroke of his thumb, Bucky makes a decision that’s half done with his crotch.

He clears his throat, says close to Steve’s mouth: “Do you want to do something special tonight?”

Steve’s draws back a little to look at him, a smile spreading across his face. He looks so blissfully happy, so delighted and _surprised_ that Bucky knows he’s made the right decision. “Yeah,” he says, voice gentle. “Yeah, Buck, I do.”

Bucky feels himself grin back at him, and sits up on the bed.

He doesn’t like to keep his own knives here, not when there’s so many kids around that could find them and get into them, but there’s a little blade that he knows Steve keeps in a hidden pocket in his suit, and since said suit has long since made its way to the floor of the hut, it’s easy to grab it now.

Steve has propped himself up on one elbow on Bucky’s bed: his eyes get wider when he sees what Bucky is carrying, but his mouth doesn’t move. A little line appears between his eyebrows: he’s confused, or worried.

And that’s okay; Bucky hadn’t known all the specifics at first, either.

Bucky lies back down on the bed, blade in hand, settling himself comfortably on the thin pillow and giving Steve a little smirk. Steve continues to look down at him questioningly, his hair all messed up already and sticking up everywhere, the confusion adorable on his stupid handsome face.

Bucky raises his head to lean in very close to him, lips near the perfect shell of his lover’s ear, and whispers the details of what they are going to do.

Then he pulls away, smiling, and rests his head back on the pillow.

Steve looks at him.

Bucky smiles back, wider.

“Oh,” Steve says flatly, and something like a tremor goes through him.

Bucky’s stomach drops and he freezes, because _oh god he did it wrong_ and Steve is going to get upset again after all. He’s going to get upset, going to sit up and make faces and swear about stuff and Bucky will have to leave and go outside, and Bucky has gone and fucking ruined _everything_ again when it was so nice, when it was supposed to be good, when it was supposed to be _special_.

But this time—for once in his goddamn life—he is in luck.

Because the anger and the pacing and the ranting don't come. Instead, next to him, Steve just lies down on the bed, on his back. He stares up at the thatched ceiling above them in complete silence, and he just keeps staring like that, and he doesn’t get upset at all.


End file.
